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One day,when Aleksandar was ten, school let out and Uncle Krasimir wasn’t there. Instead, another one of his father’s friends was waiting to escort him home. When Aleksandar asked his escort where his uncle was, he said he moved away.
That didn’t make any sense. All of his uncle’s things were here. His piano was here. Aleksandar was here. Surely his uncle wouldn’t leave him, and never without saying goodbye.
His escort must be mistaken. Perhaps his uncle was sick or maybe he was delivering an antique. That had happened before. His uncle usually warned him, but maybe there hadn’t been time.
When he arrived home, he looked for his mother. He would ask her where his uncle went, but only Ivet, the housekeeper, was home and Ivet didn’t like him. So he ran to his uncle’s house. It wasn’t very far. Just across the river and along a path that wound east through the woods. He could make it there intwenty minutes—ten if, instead of using the narrow stone bridge, he crossed the river on foot.
Outside his uncle's house, he retrieved the spare key hidden behind a river rock that had come loose from the mortar. The courtyard was empty. His uncle’s workshop too. He searched every room and did not find him.
Was his uncle really gone? No. He couldn’t be. Aleksandar would wait for him.
He dragged the duvet from his uncle’s bed into the closet. The scent of his uncle—clove and loose tobacco from his pipe—was strongest there, where all of his clothes were in one place.
If he closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, he could imagine the sound of his uncle’s voice when he said he loved him, the warmth of his hug, the sky blue color of his eyes.
Eventually, he fell asleep to a dream of the day his uncle carvedAVinto the side of the piano, right underneathKV, the initials he’d carved long before Aleksandar was born.
Aleksandar had felt guilty, like they were carving into an ancient tree, like they were defacing it.
His uncle had said, “Long after we’re both gone, this piano will remember us, just like we will never forget it.”
When Aleksandar woke the next morning, he was in his own bed and the lingering scent of honey and roses explained that his mother had carried him there.
Over the weeks that followed, Aleksandar went to his uncle’s house to practice the piano every day. He didn’t want his uncle to be disappointed when he returned. But his uncle was never there and he didn’t come back.
Now that his uncle was gone, he was grateful for those initials carved into the side of the piano. When he traced his fingers over theKV, it helped him know his uncle was real, that he hadn’t imagined him into existence.
Every time Aleksandar played, he gave the piano all of hisloneliness, all of his confusion, every stab of pain from his uncle’s abandonment. The music that rose in the air and drifted out through the windows into the forest beyond, fluttered around like fireflies against the starless night sky inside his mind. Every note was the color blue. Lonely. Sad. Left.
6
IAN
The hospital surgery consultation room was slightly larger than a bathroom stall, the walls only thick enough to make the surgeon’s droning words unintelligible in the room next door. The bone-chilling wail that soon followed explained exactly what these rooms were for. Would Alek’s surgeon soon arrive and deliver equally wail-inducing news?
Ian sat at a flimsy white table that still rocked despite a scrap of cardboard shoved under one leg. Earlier, he’d rinsed the blood from his body the best he could in a shallow sink, his stomach rolling at the smell of iron and the red-tinged water that swirled down the drain. After, he’d changed into scrubs a nurse had given him, but he must not have washed his hands well enough because he spotted dried blood deep under his fingernails, a dark burgundy that reminded him of the paint on the walls in the parlor when the sun hit it.
The clock over the door said it had been five hours. It felt like five days, as far as Ian was concerned.
His cell had died an hour in, so he mapped the landmarks of the white acrylic tabletop to distract himself. There were black,oily scuffs on the edges, long scratches on the top right quadrant, and miniature potholes throughout. The artificial recirculated hospital air made him thirsty, but he couldn’t bring himself to drink.
The door opened and Ian looked up. A short woman with brown skin, dark eyes, and a blue hair net smiled before sitting down across from him. She extended her hand across the table. Ian looked at it. Were those the hands that tried to save Alek? Had they been successful?
She dropped her hand and in a thick accent said, “I’m Dr. Modorovic, the neurosurgeon who operated on your partner.”
When Ian originally said Alek was his partner, he’d meant in the business sense, but they’d assumed otherwise and he had let them.
She opened her mouth and Ian felt like his heart was pulled out through his stomach.
“Your partner has a subdural hematoma in his left frontal lobe. In some cases, surgery is not required, but in this case, it was. The skull is like a vault and if too much blood accumulates, it can compress the brain and damage it further. I performed a craniotomy, which means I cut a small window into his skull so that I could remove the hematoma and stop the bleeding. I then secured the skull back in place with screws. The brain damage appeared minimal, but we won’t know how much the fall affected him until he wakes up, which will hopefully be soon.”
“There was so much blood. I thought…”
“The blood you saw was from the superficial head wound. The hematoma was only about the size of a marble.”
Ian burst into tears, loud wracking sobs that likely carried through the thin consult room walls and into the waiting room proper.
He really hadn’t thought Alek was going to make it.
